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FTH21110.1177/0966735012451819Feminist TheologyYee

Article

The Silenced Speak: Hannah,

Mary, and Global Poverty1

Feminist Theology
21(1) 4057
The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission: sagepub.
co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0966735012451819
fth.sagepub.com

Gale A. Yee

Abstract
Three of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to eradicate poverty are very
much inter-related: Promote gender equality and empower women, Reduce child mortality,
and Improve maternal health. Although the biblical text has often been used to subordinate and
oppress women, it can be a resource to empower women who live and give birth in conditions
of grinding poverty. Put in the mouths of pregnant women, the Song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2) and
Marys Magnificat (Lk. 1) envision a reversal of hierarchies, in which The Lord raises up the poor
from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. Attention will be paid to the social pre-exilic
and Palestinian contexts of exploitation to which these songs speak.

Keywords
Hannah, Mary of Nazareth, Millennium Development Goals, poverty
From a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die (Sirach 25.24).
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have
authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was
not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved
through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Tim.
2.13-15).

The September 2010 United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals
(MDG) concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight antipoverty goals by their 2015 target date and the announcement of major new commitments for womens empowerment, maternal and childrens health and other initiatives
1

Research for this article was made possible through the 2010-2011 Lilly Theological Research
Grants program. All biblical citations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Corresponding author:
Gale A. Yee
Email: gyee@eds.edu

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against poverty, hunger and disease. Nevertheless, working against such ambitious goals
are biblical texts, such as those in the epigraph above, that have legitimized the subordination and the oppression of women in the course of history. According to these texts,
woman alone is responsible for sin and death in the world. Therefore, her voice and those
of her daughters must be silenced. Although cursed by pain in childbirth (Gen. 3.16), 1
Timothy declares that woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in
faith and love and holiness, with modesty.
Resisting the use of the biblical text as a club to batter women, we will in this article
hear the silenced speak, drawing lessons from two biblical women on how they can be
of service in promoting three Millennium Development Goals: Promote gender equality
and empower women; Reduced child mortality; and Improve maternal health.2
Although we may disagree with 1 Timothys claim that women will be saved through
childbearing, we have concrete evidence that promoting gender equality, empowering
women, and improving their maternal health are absolutely central in eliminating world
poverty.3 The two women I discuss not only speak, they sing! They sing of how God
victoriously overturns social hierarchies, raising the poor from the dust and lifting the
needy from the ash heap (1 Sam. 2.8), filling the hungry with good things, and sending
the rich away empty (Lk. 1.53). And they sing their songs in contexts dear to these
MDGs: their pregnancy, motherhood, and empowerment in the midst of poverty. These
women are Hannah in 1 Sam. 1-2 and Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Lk. 1-2.

Hannah (1 Sam. 1-2)

In our English Bibles, Samuel of the Hebrew canon is divided into two books, with 1
Sam. following the book of Ruth. However, in the Hebrew canon the book of Samuel
follows the book of Judges, which I think is significant theologically. There are points
of contact between the end of Judges and the beginning of Samuel, which will have
bearing on the story of Hannah. Judges concludes with the violent rape and dismemberment of one woman in Judg. 19, leading to the seizure and rape of six hundred more
women during a civil war among the tribes. These women were forced to become wives
to replenish the disgraced remnant of the tribe of Benjamin in Judg. 21. We do not hear
the voices of pain, rage, and protest of any of these women through their enforced pregnancies. Rape as a tactic of warfare still continues to this day. A former United Nations
force commander recently noted that it is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a
soldier in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 27,000 rapes were
reported in 2006. Even though UN Security Council Resolution 1820 was enacted in
2008 to prevent sexual violence in conflict, it has been undermined by individual cases

2
3

For complete information on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, see, http://
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Kabeer N (2003) Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Develop
ment Goals: A Handbook for Policy-Makers and Other Stakeholders. Ottawa: International
Development Research Centre. Available at: http://www.idrc.ca/openebooks/067-5/

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of UN peacekeepers themselves who were guilty of trafficking in women and girls and
sexual exploitation.4
The muteness and invisibility of the women raped in Judges and those in our own time
directly contrasts with Hannah who, in the next narrative of the Hebrew canon, is able to
verbalize her own pain, anger and protest to God for her infertility, along with a magnificent prayer of praise. From a feminist perspective, I would like to hope that, in the literary juxtaposition of their accounts, the silenced women at the end of Judges eventually
found some sort of expression in the bitter laments and protest of Hannah in 1 Sam5
The image of Hannah releasing her anguish before God can also be a model for the
countless women who have been raped in combat. And that, as with Hannah, the God of
the oppressed will hear their cries and respond.
Rationalizing the atrocities against women at the end of Judges is the concluding line
of the book: there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own
eyes (Judg. 21.25). Presumably, a king will restore order to the land. However, in 1
Sam., Hannahs son will warn Israel of the dangers of establishing a monarchy:
So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a
king. He said, These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take
your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his
chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of
fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and make his implements of
war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and
cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards
and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards
and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves and
the best of your cattle and donkeys and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of
your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your
king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day
(1 Sam. 8.10-18).

The establishment of the monarchy created a stratified pyramidal society of the haves
and have-nots.6 Solomon and the other kings of Israel exploited their peasantry, funneling their heavy taxes and tributes to just a small select portion of the population.
These comprised only 1-5% of the population, but owned or controlled 50-70% of the
means of production. A great income disparity between rich and poor still exists today.
4

United Nations Development Fund for Women (2008) Progress of the Worlds Women
2008/2009. Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability. Available at: http://www.
unifem.org/progress/2008/publication.html
Many scholars have noted correspondences between the end of Judges and 1 Samuel. See
especially, Jobling D (1998) 1 Samuel. Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,
43-76; and the poetic rendering by Fewell DN (2003) Hannahs song: Judges 19-21; 1 Samuel
1-3. In: The Children of Israel: Reading the Bible for the Sake of Our Children. Nashville,
TN: Abingdon,197-223.
Yee GA (2003) Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman As Evil in the Hebrew Bible.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 60-67; Gottwald NK (1993) Social class as an analytic and
hermeneutical category in biblical studies. Journal of Biblical Literature 112: 3-22.

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Compare these figures with the US, where the top 1% of the population owns 37.1% of
all assets, while the bottom 80% owns 12.3%.7
Unlike Israels tribal period when any surplus wealth from agriculture went back into
the tribe and enriched it, during the monarchic period, this surplus wealth of crops and
herds left the tribes and was sent upward in the pyramid as tributes or taxes to a nonproductive minority. The king and his aristocracy were not producers but consumers living off the backbreaking production of their peasants, in order to pay for their costly wars,
ambitious building projects, and lavish lifestyle. The peasantry, on the other hand, was
kept at a subsistence level of existence, left with just enough to survive. Besides demanding a huge amount of their farm goods and livestock, the king demanded another form of
taxation, paid in human bodies. According to 1 Kgs 5, King Solomon conscripted forced
labor out of all Israel; the levy numbered thirty thousand men. He sent them to Lebanon,
ten thousand a month in shifts; they would be a month in Lebanon and two months at
home (1 Kgs 5.13-14). A very large sector of the population was thus conscripted into
labor gangs without pay to construct Solomons many buildings (compare 1 Kgs 9.15-22).
Because many were taken away from farming and herding, and from their own families,
there were fewer people to work the land and care for the flock. Nevertheless, the people
still had to keep up with the monthly taxation of farm goods and animals (compare 1 Kgs
4.22-28), which added to their considerable burdens. Solomon in all his glory was enjoyed
only by a privileged few, while exploiting and oppressing many.
In 1 Sam. 8.10-18, Samuel warns of this exploitation by the king and his ruling elite.
But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, No! We are determined to have a king over us (1 Sam. 8.19). As a result, during its monarchic period,
most of Israel will live under conditions of grinding poverty. However, as God hears the
cries of the Israelites and responds in the Exodus story (Exod. 2.24-25), God hears the
cries of Hannah and responds in 1 Sam. Hannah gives birth to Samuel, the last judge in
Israel, who warned of the perils of choosing a human king over Yahweh.
It goes without saying that the Bible is primarily a male story, written by men for men.
Women enter into this larger male story primarily in their relationship with men as wives
and as mothers. Two ideologies governed women in ancient Israel. The first is a patrilineal kinship ideology that was supported by a number of social practices that privileged
men and disenfranchised women. This ideology determined male advantages when it
came to descent, inheritance, status in religion and cult, and in marriage and the family.
The second is an ideology of honor and shame that intersected with this patrilineal kinship ideology. Women acquired honor within this system by their acts of deference and
sexual modesty toward men and by bearing legitimate children, especially sons, for their
husbands.8 It is in these lights that we must regard Hannah. Her story was most likely
7

See the chart, The rich few. In: Spiegel Online International. Available at: http://www.
spiegel.de/international/world/bild-712496-122272.html and the accompanying article by
Schulz T, The erosion of Americas middle class. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-712496,00.html
Yee GA (2003) Poor Banished Children of Eve: Woman As Evil in the Hebrew Bible.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 36-48, for an extended discussion of the ideologies of kinship and honor/shame.

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included in the founding narrative of Israel because she was the mother of its last judge.
Nevertheless, her story is significant for our topic, as one who was silenced, but who
powerfully proclaimed the liberating acts of God on behalf of the poor and powerless.
Her story can be divided into two parts: 1 Sam. 1.1-28 where Hannah finds her voice,
and 1 Sam. 2.1-10, where Hannah uses her voice.9
We are introduced to Hannah and Peninnah as the co-wives of a man named Elkanah.
Within ancient Israels male ideology of kinship and honor, a man could have more than
one wife, increasing the likelihood of begetting more sons and thus more honor for himself and the family. The relationship between the two wives is conflicted. Unlike the
secondary wife Peninnah, Elkanahs first wife Hannah has no children. She belongs to a
whole line of matriarchs in the Bible who are barren, but who eventually give birth to
important leaders in Israel: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Samsons mother.10 Because the
ability to give birth especially to sons confers honor upon women and elevates their status as wives and mothers, Hannah barrenness is an acute source of shame for her.
Elkanah would take the whole family on an annual pilgrimage to the temple at Shiloh.
During these yearly occasions, Peninnah would taunt Hannah severely, rubbing salt in
Hannahs wound, because the Lord had closed her womb (1 Sam. 1.5-7). Elkanah is no
help. When Hannah weeps and refuses to eat, Elkanah tries to comfort her, Hannah, why
do you weep?Am I not more to you than ten sons? (1 Sam. 1.8). It is a convention in
the Hebrew narrative that the first direct speech of an individual revealed his or her character.11 The first words out of Elkanahs mouth reveals his narcissistic cluelessness!
Elkanah would have gotten better traction if he had said to Hannah, Are you not more to
me than ten sons?12
During one of these pilgrimages, Hannah had enough. She goes to the temple and
pours out her heart to the Lord, the one who had closed her womb in the first place:
She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly (1 Sam. 1.10).
Notice that the text does not record Hannah speaking directly to Penninah to counter her
taunts, nor does she respond to Elkanahs bungled attempts to console her. The first time
Hannah directly speaks in the text, where she finds her voice, is when she vows to the
Lord: O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will
set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor
intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head (1 Sam. 1.11). The first time we hear
9 Cook JE (1999) Hannahs Desire, Gods Design: Early Interpretations of the Story of Hannah.
Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 35.
10 See, Havrelock RS (2008) The myth of birthing the hero: heroic barrenness in the Hebrew
Bible. Biblical Interpretation 16.2: 154-78; and Fuchs E (1985) The literary characterization of mothers and sexual politics in the Hebrew Bible. In: Yarbro Collins A (ed.) Feminist
Perspectives on Biblical Scholars. Chico, CA: Scholars Press: 117-36.
11 Bowman RG (2007) Narrative criticism: human purpose in conflict with divine presence. In:
Yee GA (ed.) Judges and Method: New Approaches in Biblical Studies. Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 2nd edn, 23-26; Bar-Efrat S (1978) Literary modes and methods in the biblical
narrative in view of 2 Samuel 10-20 and 1 Kings 1-2. Immanuel 8: 23-25.
12 Jobling D (1998) 1 Samuel. Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 131.

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Hannahs voice is when she cries out for a son to the God who has closed her womb and
promises that she will dedicate that son in Gods service. Hannah puts God in a position
where he has to respond, not with words but with deeds,13 and she will reciprocate
accordingly.
There is another man in the story who also misunderstands her. This is the priest Eli.
The text says that Hannah was praying silently; only her lips moved, but her voice was
not heard (1 Sam. 1.13). Notice that emphasis on a silent prayer, and a voice not heard.
The text continues: Therefore Eli thought she was drunk. Another clueless male! He sees
a woman in a temple weeping and moving her lips. He does not see a person in pain, one
who might be seeking consolation from God, but automatically assumes she is intoxicated. He says to her, How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Put away
your wine (1 Sam. 1.14). And again the silenced one speaks, and finds her voice: No, my
lord, I am a woman deeply troubled; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have
been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless
woman, for I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation all this time (1
Sam. 1.15-16). Eli tells her to Go in peace, (shalom); the God of Israel grant the petition
you have made to him (1 Sam. 1.17). Which God did: The Lord remembered her and in
due time Hannah conceived and bore a son (1 Sam. 1.19). We next hear Hannah speak in
her naming the newborn, Samuel, for I asked him of the Lord (1 Sam. 1.20). Years later
after weaning Samuel,14 Hannah makes good her promise and brings Samuel to Shiloh.
After offering her gifts of a sacrificed bull, flour and wine,15 she surrenders to Eli her
ultimate sacrifice, Samuel, saying: For this child I prayed; and the Lord has granted me
the petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives,
he is given to the Lord. And she left him there for the Lord (1 Sam. 1.26-27).16
We now come to the section where Hannah uses her voice, in what has come to be
known as the Song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2.1-10). It follows the tradition of other songs in
the Bible,17 like the song of Miriam (Exod. 15.19-21), the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5), and
13 Havea J (2003) Elusions of Control: Biblical Law on the Words of Women. Atlanta, GA:
Society of Biblical Literature, 148.
14 Wet-nursing contracts range from a year and a half to three years. See, Yee GA (2009) Take
this child and suckle it for me: wet nurses and resistance in ancient Israel. Biblical Theology
Bulletin 39.4: 183, 185 (180-89).
15 Regarding Hannahs cultic visibility, see Meyers C (1996) The Hannah narrative in feminist
perspective. In: Coleson JE, Matthews VH (eds) Go to the Land I Will Show You: Studies in
Honor of Dwight W. Young. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 117-26.
16 Some have interpreted Hannahs abandonment of Samuel as child abuse. See Steinberg N
(2010) 1 Samuel 1, the United Nations convention on the rights of children, and the best
interests of the child. Journal of Childhood and Religion 1.3. Available at: http://www.
childhoodandreligion.com/JCR/Volume_1_%282010%29_files/SteinbergApril2010.pdf; and
Jobling D (1998) 1 Samuel. Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 306-307.
From an emic perspective, that of the Israelite culture itself, giving a child into cultic service
was honorable. From an etic perspective, assessing the culture from the perspective of the
outside observer, Hannahs action can be read as child abuse.
17 ODay G (1985) Singing womans song: a hermeneutic of liberation. Currents in Theology
and Mission 12.4: 203-10.

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as we will see later, the Magnificat of Mary (Lk. 1.46-56), songs put into the mouths of
women, triumphantly proclaiming Gods victories: Hannah prayed, and said, My heart
exults in the Lord;/ my strength is exalted in my God./My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in my victory. (2.1). A surface reading of Hannahs song might strike
some readers as odd. The only verse that seems to tie directly into Hannahs personal
story is v. 5b: The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.
But even here the facts do not tally. According to 2.21, Hannah will eventually give birth
to five more children besides Samuel, three sons and two daughters. Six children total,
not the songs seven.
We can explain the oddity of Hannahs song if we read it in the context of Samuels diatribe against the abuses that a king will inflict upon the people (1 Sam. 8).18 Hannahs song
can be read against a context in which an exploiting class burdens its peasant classes with
taxes and tributes that keep them barely at subsistence level. Her song can be read as praising God who shakes up the status quo, by overturning these oppressive hierarchies, taking
power and wealth from the dominant and giving it to the poor and vulnerable.
The bows of the mighty are broken.
But the feeble gird on strength.
Those who were full have hired
themselves out for bread,
But those who were hungry are fat with spoil
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
God brings low, and also exalts.
God raises up the poor from the dust;
God lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes
And inherit a seat of honor.
For the pillars of the earth are the Lords,
And on them God has set the world (1 Sam. 2.4-5a, 7-8).19

The social reversals in Hannahs song are striking. The military will become crippled,
but the exhausted with be girded with strength. Those, who were full, have hired themselves out for bread (2.5). The royal elites will now actually have to work to eat, while

18 Polzin R (1989) Samuel and the Deuteronomist: A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic
History. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 18-54. Polzin argues that Hannahs story is a
parable about kingship.
19 The reference to God giving strength to his king, and exalting the power of his anointed in
2:10b seems to indicate a pro-monarchic outlook. Here, however, I agree with David Jobling
and Norman K. Gottwald that the original poem was altered later to provide divine support for
the king. See, Jobling D (1998) 1 Samuel. Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press,
166-69 and Gottwald NK (1979) The Tribes of Yahweh. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979,
534. These closing words clearly contradict the liberatory outlook of the rest of the song.
Jobling argues that the closing words result from the royal propaganda machine, designed,
like Psalm 72, to create the fiction that the king is on the side of the poor.

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the starving, upon whom they preyed, will become satisfied. God will raise the poor from
the city dump, and needy from the garbage heap. Like the Song of Deborah (Judg. 5),
another celebration of peasant power in Israel,20 Hannahs powerful voice proclaims on
behalf of the exploited that God will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked
shall be cut off in darkness; for not by might does one prevail (1 Sam. 2.9).

Mary (Lk. 1-2)

We now turn to our second woman who speaks forcefully on behalf of the victimized,
Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Lk. 1-2. Some might not be familiar with the Mary I will
be discussing: a poor, brown-skinned, teen-age unwed mother from the boonies. This
Mary was de-politicized, spiritualized, and morphed into a blond, blue-eyed Caucasian.
Dressed in blue, one of the colors only worn by the wealthy,21 she became the picture of
an upper-class Renaissance woman, who was addressed as Our Lady. This was the
Mary that I grew up with, as a former Roman Catholic.
Just as we had to learn the social contexts of Hannah to understand the exceptional
power of her words and acts, so must we understand the milieu in which Mary lived. The
oppressive conditions of the Israelite peasantry under the monarchy actually worsened
when the nation was destroyed in 587 bce. The land and its people were colonized by a
series of empires: Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. To be sure, there were a number
of popular revolts and other forms of resistance against these colonizers,22 but these were
brutally crushed. What were the social, economic and religious conditions of first-century
Palestine which provide the important background for understanding Mary and her song?
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called
Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.
The virgins name was Mary (Lk. 1.26-27). In order to appreciate Mary, one must know
something about the region in which she lived, Galilee.23 Galilee was the district west of
the Sea of Galilee in northern Palestine, where Jesus spent much of his ministry. It was a
rich agricultural region for growing wheat, and fruit and olive trees.
The Sea of Galilee itself supported an important fishing industry. Fish was a fundamental
staple in the Mediterranean world. Bread and fish, with the addition of olive-oil and wine,
formed the most substantial parts of the diet for both rich and poor in ancient times. High
prices often put fresh fish out of the reach of the poor. In fact, it was presumed that if a poor
person bought fresh fish, he was a thief. The poor could only afford dried and salted fish,
which was the basic food of the lower classes, slaves, peasants and soldiers in the field.24
20 Jobling D (1998) 1 Samuel. Berit Olam; Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 167.
21 Boyd MP (2006) Blue. The New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, A-C, Volume 1.
Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 482.
22 See Horsley RA (1985 [1999]) Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements in the
Time of Jesus. Repr. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International.
23 Johnson EA (2009) Galilee: a critical matrix for Marian studies. Theological Studies 70:
327-46.
24 Hanson KC (1997) The Galilean fishing economy and the Jesus tradition. Biblical Theology
Bulletin 27: 99-111.

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It is telling that the Gospels never mention meat. It was bread and fish that Jesus
blessed, which miraculously fed the five thousand in the desert. In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus asks, What person among you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a
stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? (Mt. 7.9-10). In one of his many
parables, Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven like a net which was thrown into the sea
and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, laborers drew it ashore and sat down
and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad. When the resurrected Jesus
appears to the disciples in Lukes Gospel, he demonstrates his humanness by eating a
piece of broiled fish.
Fishing families who worked the waters were on the same social scale as the
peasantry who worked the land. Fishing was backbreaking labor with relatively
small reward. Our Gospels record that their hard labor did not always result in a
catch (Lk. 5.7-10). Assuming that they were fortunate to net a substantial quantity
of fish, they spent the night and early morning disentangling and the sorting the
commercially valuable fish from the bad. And tax collectors were on the lookout for
a successful catch and were ready to take their cut. Mark records the tax collector,
Levi, sitting by the shore at the tax booth, when Jesus comes along and says Follow
me (Mk. 2.13-17).
The agricultural and fishing economies of Galilee were aggressively controlled by
their colonizer, imperial Rome, which ruled the region through its Herodian client
kings. The lower classes in Roman Palestine carried the heavy tax burdens of three
sets of elites.25 The first was to Rome, whose imperial estates were managed by prefects, such as Pontius Pilate. The second was the taxation of the Herods, the clientkings of Rome, who also controlled land and agricultural production in their large
estates, as well as the fishing industry in the Galilee. The third were the heavy tithes
and offerings to the priestly aristocracy of the Jerusalem temple.26 As in the pre-exilic
time of the Israelite monarchy, the peasantry and fisherfolk had to borrow money
from the wealthy or sell themselves or their children into slavery to compensate for
their debt (compare 2 Kgs 4.1-7).27 Doing the dirty work of extracting the soil taxes,
head taxes, market taxes, transit tolls, port taxes, rents, temple tithes, and sacrifices
for the ruling elites were the tax collectors, sometimes called publicans. These individuals were regarded as personae non gratae by the populace. In Roman and
Hellenistic literature, they are lumped with beggars, thieves, and robbers, which

25 For a thorough discussion of the taxation and debt cycles in Roman Palestine, see Hanson KC,
Oakman DE (2008) The denarius stops here: political economy in roman Palestine. Palestine
in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press,
2nd edn, 93-121.
26 Hanson KC, Oakman DE (2008) The denarius stops here: political economy in roman
Palestine. Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and Social Conflicts. Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 98; Herzog II WR (2005) Why peasants responded to Jesus. In: Horsley
RA (ed.) Christian Origins. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 48.
27 Chirichigno GC (1993) Debt-Slavery in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press.

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offers some perspective on Jesus who was accused of being a drunkard and a friend
of tax collectors and sinners (Mt. 11.19).28
Besides financing the opulent lifestyles and armies of the Herodian kings, taxation in
both material and human resources particularly bankrolled their numerous building projects, such as Herod the Greats Jerusalem temple renovation, his pleasure palace at
Masada, and the city of Caesarea in honor of the Roman emperor.29 His son Herod
Antipas built his capital city, Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, which
allowed him to control the trade route along the lake as well as its lucrative fishing industry. Antipas also expanded the city of Sepphoris into an important administrative center.
The establishment of these cities brought Galilee more directly under Roman and
Herodian control, than it had been previously. With the construction of good roads, storage facilities, and administrative offices, the elites had greater access to the agricultural
and fishing resources of the Galilee. This urbanization and the flow of elites into these
cities put considerable pressure upon the local rural population by increasing the need for
more taxes to support their rich lifestyle, as well as making tax collection more accessible.30 To the peasants in the villages, the already burdensome triple tax became next to
unbearable as the Herodian portion was increased to pay their building projects.31 One of
the villages most likely affected was Nazareth, the village of Mary, located about four
miles from Sepphoris. Nathaniels cynical response about Jesus in Jn 1.46, Can anything
good come out of Nazareth? reflects Nazareths reputation as a hick one-horse town.
Nazareth was a small village of about 400, compared to 8,000-12,000 in neighboring
Sepphoris.32 Archaeology has revealed no evidence of any public structures in Nazareth
from the early Roman Period. No marble nor mosaics nor frescoes or any luxury items.
No public inscriptions whatsoever, signaling the illiteracy of the village. The material
artifacts recovered reveal a poor agrarian community of no political significance, and
one preoccupied with farming and heavy taxation to support the aristocracy of nearby
Sepphoris.33
Because Mary was married to a tekton, named Joseph, whose trade was passed on
to Jesus (compare Mt. 13.55; Mk. 6.3), we have another social stratum to consider in
ancient Palestine, alongside the peasant and fishing classes. Jesus and his father are usually depicted as carpenters. However, a better translation of the Greek tekton is builder,
a manual laborer who worked with stone, wood, and sometimes metal in large and small

28 Donahue JR (1992) Tax collector. Anchor Bible Dictionary 6, 337-38.

29 Netzer E (1992) Herods Building Program. Anchor Bible Dictionary 3,169-72.
30 Moreland M (2006) The Jesus Movement in the villages of Roman Galilee: archaeology, Q,
and modern anthropological theory. In: Horsley R (ed.) Oral Performance, Popular Tradition,
and Hidden Transcript in Q. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 169; Reed JL (2000)
Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence. Harrisburg, PA:
Trinity Press International, 68-69, 96-97.
31 Johnson EA (2009) Galilee: a critical matrix for Marian studies. Theological Studies 70: 335.
32 Reed JL (2000) Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 83-89.
33 Reed JL (2000) Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International 131-32, 137-38.

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building projects.34 The tekton belonged to the artisan class, which according to Lenski,
drew from the ranks of the dispossessed peasantry and their non-inheriting sons. At the
lower end of the social scale, their income was usually less than the majority of peasants
and their numbers were not large.35 Evidence from the Hebrew Bible and LXX seems to
qualify Lenskis notion of artisans as dispossessed peasants for those in ancient Israel,
and perhaps Palestine. Artisans were among those exiled to Babylonia with the upper
classes (2 Kgs 24.14, 16; LXX tekton). Although artisans were disparaged in Greek and
Roman literature, this seems not to be the case among the Jews of Palestine, such as
Josephus and the rabbis, who seem to have respected and praised artisans for their labor
and craftsmanship.36 Joseph and Jesus could have conceivably worked in the building
projects of nearby Sepphoris and other cities of Galilee before Jesus began his ministry
at age 30 (Lk. 3.23).37 However, Jesus probably avoided Sepphoris during his ministry to
escape the reach of Herod Antipas, who had beheaded John the Baptist.38
How, then, do these social conditions affect our understanding of Mary and her
Magnificat? Mary was a resident of a poor small village whose agricultural goods and
human labor were heavily taxed to support the urban aristocracy at nearby Sepphoris and
for elites much farther away in Jerusalem and in Rome. Like the other rural villages in
Palestine, Nazareth was burdened with the triple taxation of Rome, the Herods, and the
Temple. The lack of any archaeological remains of higher status in Nazareth indicate that
Mary herself was probably one of the illiterate poor of her village, even though wife to
an artisan and mother to an artisan son. She herself witnessed the abusive exploitation of
her village whose surpluses were drained by the cities, keeping its peasants scarcely at
subsistence level. Like many wives, she had to endure the long absences of husband and
son as they followed the building projects for work in different parts of the Galilee and
perhaps even in Jerusalem.
Like her ancient Israelite ancestors, she and the other women of her village toiled
very hard in support of her family and to keep up with demands of taxation.39 Even
today, women in many poor countries endure the bulk of subsistence production and

34 Campbell KM (2005) What was Jesus occupation? Journal of the Evangelical Theological
Society 48.3: 501-19.
35 Lenski G (1966) Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York: McGrawHill; Repr. 1984, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina: 278-80, 284.
36 Fiensy D (1999) Leaders of mass movements and the leader of the Jesus Movement. Journal
for the Study of the New Testament 74: 21-22; Levine AJ (2007) Theory, apologetic, history:
reviewing Jesus Jewish context. Australian Biblical Review 55: 67-68.
37 Fiensy D (1999) Leaders of mass movements and the leader of the Jesus Movement. Journal
for the Study of the New Testament 74: 24-25. Compare with Longstaff TRW (1990) Nazareth
and Sepphoris: insights into Christian origins. Anglican Theological Review 11: 8-15.
38 Reed JL (2000) Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus: A Re-Examination of the Evidence.
Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 137-38.
39 The following is drawn from Meyers C (1988) Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women
in Context. New York: Oxford University Press; and eadem (1998) Everyday life: women
in the period of the Hebrew Bible. In: Newsom CA, Ringe SH (eds) The Womens Bible
Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, expanded edn, 251-59.

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51

reproduction.40 First of all, rather than tilling the grain fields, Mary would have done
farm work that was compatible with childcare, such as cultivating fruit trees, vines
and vegetables on plots closer to the household. She had to convert harvested foodstuffs, such as grain, olives, and grapes, for storage. Thus she did a lot of threshing,
drying, pounding, pitting, pressing olives for oils and grapes for wine. Mary had to
process the harvest to convert it to food. So, for example, to bake a loaf of bread, she
had to soak, mill, and grind the grain into flour, and then assemble ingredients, knead
and bake the dough in a communal oven. Mary took care of feeding, grooming, and
healing her animals, and then milking them for dairy products. Mary was responsible
for making cloth and clothes from cloth for Joseph and Jesus. Therefore, she had to
shear the goat, process its hair, spin the yarn, weave the yarn on a loom to make the
fabric, and then cut and sew the outfit. She had to make pottery for eating and weave
baskets for storage. Just like millions of women in Third World countries today,
Mary would have been responsible for the grueling collection of water and hauling
it back to the household. On top of all this, she, like all rural women in Palestine, was
expected to produce children, which were necessary in this labor-intensive society
with a high infant mortality rate. Of course, the raising, socializing and instructing
of Jesus primarily fell to her, especially if Joseph was absent from the household on
a building project. All of these duties she shared with the other women of her village,
duties that were time-consuming, exhausting, involving a complex set of skills, and
were absolutely essential for the survival of the household. And most of the fruits of
her and her villages labor were ruthlessly expropriated to bolster the extravagant
lifestyle of urban elites.
Mary was no stranger to violence. She grew up and gave birth during the brutal rule
of the Herod the Great. Matthews birth story records his order to kill all the children
under two in Bethlehem, because the wise men refused to tell Herod where Jesus was
(Mt. 2.16-18). Popular revolts and resistance plagued Herods rule and broke out particularly after his death in 4 bce. Judas, son of Hezekiah, mounted an insurrection at
Sepphoris, stormed the royal palace and seized all its weapons and booty. Rome acted
swiftly in quashing the revolt. In the environs of Sepphoris, the villages were burned,
the people sold into slavery, and thousands of rebels publicly crucified in a systematic
killing spree.41 Living in Nazareth, as a young mother during this time, Mary would
have experienced and survived the horrifying violence of Roman troops crushing the
rebellion of her ethnic kin. She will later in life witness her own son tortured and crucified by the Romans in Jerusalem.
40 See Figure 2.1: The Iceberg View of the Economy which displays graphically the
unrecognized and unpaid labor of women in subsistence and reproduction and childcare,
in Kabeer N (2003) Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium
Development Goals: A Handbook for Policy-Makers and Other Stakeholders. Ottawa:
International Development Research Center, 35. Available at: http://www.idrc.ca/
openebooks/067-5/
41 Horsley RA (1995) Galilee: History, Politics, People. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press
International, 60-63.

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Unlike Hannah who was already married, Mary is a betrothed virgin when the angel
Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus.42 She hears Gabriels mind-blowing prophecy that
she will conceive without the agency of a male and give birth to Jesus, who will be great,
be called Son of the Most High, and be given the throne of his ancestor David. He will
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end (Lk. 1.3233). She is told that her kinswoman Elizabeth has also conceived in her barrenness and
is now six months pregnant. For nothing is impossible with God (1.36-37). Mary
responds simply, Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your
word (1.38).
Mary is the exact opposite of Elizabeths husband, the priest Zechariah, serving in the
temple. Zechariah does not believe Gabriels prophecy that his barren wife will conceive
and, as a result, is struck dumb, silenced, unable to speak until his wife gives birth to
John the Baptist (1.18-20). Mary, on the other hand, not only believes and accepts
Gabriels words, but also sings one of the most famous hymns of the Bible, the Magnificat.
There are several correspondences between Marys song and the interchange between
Mary and Elizabeth just before it:
When Elizabeth heard Marys greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was
filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and
blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my
Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb
leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was
spoken to her by the Lord (Lk. 1.41-45).

Now listen to the themes of joy, praise, spirit, blessing, and servanthood in Marys
song:
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
Who has looked with favor on the
lowliness of Gods servant.
Surely, from now on all generations
Will call me blessed;
For the Mighty One has done great things for me,
And Holy is Gods name (1.46-49).

Marys song will continue with the themes of social reversal that we also saw in
Hannahs song:

42 I will not be discussing the arguments of some scholars that the virgin birth tradition in
Matthew and Luke were responses to the charges that Jesus was conceived illegitimately. For
these, see Schaberg J (1987) The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation
of the Infancy Narratives. San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row; Repr. New York: Crossroad,
1990, and the essays in Levine A-J (ed.) (2005) A Feminist Companion to Mariology. London
and New York: T & T Clark International.

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53

God has shown strength with his arm;

God has scattered the proud in their thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
And lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
And sent the rich away empty (Lk. 1.51-53).

Just as the person of Mary has been de-politicized and spiritualized, so has her song
been interpreted as referring to spiritual poverty and spiritual hunger. But in the context
of the terrible social conditions in which she lived, Mary is talking about grinding poverty, aching hunger, and acute exploitation by the powerful on their thrones. Hers and
Hannahs songs can only be sung with full impact by people who are not part of the
dominant social structure, by people who know what it is to be oppressed and who know
that the present social systems are bankrupt of hope. 43 Their songs inspire the joyful
hope and expectation that God who has heard the cries of the poor in the past, will
respond again. He has come to the help of Israel his servant, as he promised to our
ancestors; he has not forgotten to show mercy to Abraham and to his descendants forever (Lk. 1.54-56).
The person of Jesus has also been de-politicized and sanitized, just like his
mother. But in Lukes Gospel, after Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, after he
spent 40 days in the wilderness tempted by the devil, what was his first memorable
act?
Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galileeand when he came to
Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as
was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.
He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go
free, to proclaim the year of the Lords favor. And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to
the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he
began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Lk.
4.14-21).

Read in light of the severe exploitation in his Galilean hometown, Jesus is literally
talking about the political release of the captives, the true recovery of sight to the blind,
and the physical deliverance of the oppressed of his land. Jesus begins his public ministry by unleashing his prophetic voice, speaking truth to power, to announce the fulfillment of the liberating word that Isaiah uttered centuries ago, the message of liberation
that both Hannah and his own mother proclaimed.
****

43 ODay G (1985) Singing womans song: a hermeneutic of liberation. Currents in Theology

and Mission 12.4: 210. Lloyd L (2006) Eradicating Global Poverty: A Christian Study Guide
on the Millennium Development Goals. New York: National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the USA, 30.

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What have we learned about Hannah and Mary and how can their stories be of service
to the three Millennium Development Goals: Promote gender equality and empower
women; Reduced child mortality; and Improve maternal health? We learned that we
have to know the social, political, and economic contexts in which they lived. Their
world was not our world. The ability to become pregnant and bear children was one of
the few sources of honor for women in the patriarchal world inhabited by Hannah and
Mary. Because theirs was a labor-intensive society with a high infant mortality rate,
women were encouraged and rewarded for bearing children. Children supported their
parents when they became old and infirm. The ability to become pregnant was thus considered to be a gift from God (Exod. 23.25-26; Deut. 7.14).
Our planet currently faces an acute ecological problem of overpopulation and will not
be able to sustain and feed us if this problem is not corrected. The image of the pregnant
woman is thus an ambiguous one for us today, especially because overpopulation predominantly afflicts the so-called Third World where the poor are mostly concentrated. In
certain ways, the conditions of the poor here were the ones faced in biblical times. These
poorer countries usually do not have Social Security/a Welfare State, State/Government
pension plans, savings or other support for the elderly, who depend on their offspring to
care for them in their old age, as they did in antiquity. Furthermore, much of the economic life in poor countries is based on the labor-intensive work of the large family unit
for survival. Militating against this survival, then and now, is their disturbingly high
infant and maternal mortality rate.
Women in these poorer countries need greater access to education, family planning
information and better services once they become pregnant. These are interlinked in the
three MDGs, Promote gender equality and empower women, particularly through primary and secondary education, Reduce child mortality, and Improve maternal health.
Studies have shown that the best way to reduce family size is to improve the education,
health and nutrition of women, in particular. Better health and education lead to smaller
families, since declining birthrates tend to follow improvements in living standards.
Nevertheless, those of us in the so-called First World who do enjoy higher standards of
living must also recognize that our consumption of the planets gifts (water, food, and
raw materials) is exceedingly greater than in the Third World. A child born in the First
World leaves an ecological footprint ten times greater than one born in poorer countries. As we tackle the problem of Third World overpopulation, we must also deal with
the dilemma of First world overconsumption.
Although we differ from Hannah and Mary in our contexts regarding pregnancy and
childbirth, the reality of poverty and hunger in their world is also the reality of poverty
and hunger in ours, which the MDGs hope to eradicate. These two mothers gave birth
under the oppressive rule of elites who kept them and their villages barely at subsistence
level. Their reality was one of hunger, disease, and squalid poverty, while a small minority lived off their labor in luxury and indolence. They and their husbands engaged in
back-breaking work on the land to keep up with the demands of taxation and their own
survival.
I have taken you, the reader, through the extensive social background of these stories,
discussing the conditions in which Hannah and Mary lived, so that you can understand
the causes of poverty and oppression in biblical times, and better appreciate the message

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55

of power and hope expressed by their songs in the midst of this oppression. I urge you to
learn about our own complex global situation and discern the causes of poverty in our
own time. The MDGs address some of these causes: hunger, lack of education, the discrimination and subjugation of women, child mortality, inferior or dreadful healthcare
for mothers, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, the degradation and pollution of the
environment, the growing indebtedness of the Third World to the First World, the economic exploitation of the Third World by the First World. I urge you, the reader, to go
beyond charity, go beyond sending your checks/cheques to whatever organization, and
actually learn about and study the systemic causes of poverty, and the concrete ways to
abolish them.
I think you will find this study very depressing. Those in the US context will be
appalled at what they will discover about corporate dishonesty and greed, unfair tax laws
rigged against ordinary workers, a pay-to-play political system so corrupted by lobbying
it can barely function. Learning about the harmful and destructive effects of global capitalism and overconsumption on people and the environment may fill one with a sense of
hopelessness for the planet. However, Hannah and Mary both lived in dreadful circumstances, yet their songs express a fervent hope and confidence in the God who hears the
cry of the poor: Hannah declares, He will guard the feet of his faithful ones (1 Sam.
2.9). Mary asserts, He has come to the help of Israel his servant, as he promised to our
ancestors; he has not forgotten to show mercy to Abraham and to his descendants forever (Lk. 1.54-56). May we too remember the lives of these women, their suffering and
oppression, and their liberating songs of hope and thanksgiving, and act upon them in a
poverty-stricken world that sorely needs their message of liberation!
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